Sansa Clip May Put The Kabosh On Apple’s iPod shuffle
Aug 28th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: iPods & Portable Media Players 
 
SanDisk today introduced the Sansa Clip, a tiny MP3 player that could put the Kabosh on inexpensive, but limited MP3 players like the iPod shuffle.
The Sansa Clip is inexpensive and wearable, like the shuffle, but offers an FM radio, recorder, microphone, and a bright screen. The Sansa Clip is expected to be available this fall for $47.99 for a 1GB player and $70.99 for a 2GB unit. The 2GB Sansa Clip comes in sleek black, candy apple red, hot pink and ice blue.
Features:
- Superior sound
- A wearable clip for hands-free portability
- Large, bright (OLED) screen with a simple user interface
- FM tuner and recorder with 40 presets for listening to sports, tuning in at the gym or your favorite music station
- Built-in microphone to record thoughts while exercising or on the go
- Rechargeable battery with up to 15 hours of life – one of the most competitive battery performances for a MP3 player of its size
- Solid state flash memory for skip-free playback of music
The Sansa Clip supports many music download and subscription services, including Rhapsody To Go(R), Napster, eMusic and others. It’s designed to work seamlessly with a wide range of popular music formats such as MP3, WAV, Audible (for audio books) and Windows Media Audio (WMA) in both unprotected and protected files (such as those WMA files purchased from music stores). The Sansa Clip can also play “DRM-free” MP3 downloads.
Hopefully they do a better job with the firmware.
The sansa express was also touted as a (first gen) shuffle killer,
but the firmware and UI are so horrible it is almost unusable to me.
cases in point:
– micro SD slot does not work with 2GB cards.
– “shuffle” playback mode always plays the songs in the same random order between power downs.
– battery indicator lies sometimes – looks full but then mysteriously powers off and then
only on restart does the meter read correctly.
I doubt it. I didn’t have an iPod of any sort until fairly recently. I had a Creative Zen that I liked well enough and didn’t understand why people liked iPods so much. But my brother-in-law got me a Nano for my birthday. I started using iTunes and now I get it. I think the thing with iPods is partially that the players are good, but mainly because iTunes is pretty easy for novices to use. Other music management systems that I’ve seen are pretty clunky.
Steve Mullen
Startup BizCast
The fact that the Clip has a screen is a huge appeal factor for me. When I was shopping for an mp3 player, I was very disappointed that the Shuffle didn’t have any kind of screen. And I guess it wasn’t the right player for me because I also don’t want to shuffle my entire library all the time. Had the Clip been available when I started shopping, I would have been hard pressed to choose.
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